I swear, I really do post - and think! - about other things. But since toilets apparently seem to be the running theme for my week, that's what you, my dear audience, get to read about.
The toilet in my current apartment is not flushing properly. It isn't clogged. We just live in a building that was built in 1925, one which not only has fabulous architectural details, but which has its original electric and plumbing. The latter two give us frequent trouble, ranging from frying our computers to barfing water all over the contents of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. This weekend, we got air in our pipes. Hence the not flushing. Unfortunately, the old trick of turning on every faucet in the house starting from the top floor down doesn't work. I live in a building with 115 apartments. Even trying to do that would take a very long time and involve annoying a very large number of neighbors.
So, after a long afternoon/early evening of looking at tile and shower curtains and other such things for my bathroom at the new house, I decide to stop at Lowe's. I thought they might have a better selection of vanities and vanity tops than Home Depot and that I could get a plunger while I was there. Efficient shopping that eliminates stops?! AWESOME.
Except somehow, what should've been a half hour excursion into Lowe's at the absolute most turned into me spending an hour and a half in the store. Unlike Home Depot, there was no overly friendly saleswoman to ask me far more questions about FLUSH POWAH than I had ever considered. No, no. There was instead one salesman who was busy placing a special order for another customer. Since I found a vanity cabinet I liked but was hoping I could get it without the hideous sink, and since I also couldn't find the plungers, I decided to sort of meander around the bathroom cabinet area looking at other cabinets while I waited. It turns out that the gentleman placing the special order had a lot of questions, so it was taking a really, really, really long time...
...Aaaaand cue ignorant ass with an iPad! Despite the fact that I was visibly waiting in the help desk area, and had been for some time, this man in his overpriced hipster glasses that were an attempt to make him look younger and with-it-er (yes, that's a word now) than his silver hair would indicate swooped in just as I was opening my mouth to ask for assistance. He shoved his iPad under the salesman's nose and announced indignantly, "My faucet is leaking. It's this one!"
The salesman looked at the picture, then proceeded to give Mr. iPad a blank look. There conversation went something like this:
"Do you know what model it is?"
"No. It's this one." Cue pointing of photo at his home bathroom, like the salesman has an encyclopedic knowledge of every faucet ever made stored in his brain.
"...Okay. Do you know if it's the hot or cold line that's the problem?"
"No."
"...Okay. Do you know what part of it is dripping?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is it dripping from the tip of the faucet or from the handles or from underneath the part attaching it to the sink?"
Insert exagerrated sigh from Mr. iPad. "I don't know! But there's water on my counter." Clearly, this is a travesty of epic proportions and one with which the salesman should be incredibly concerned.
At this point in the conversation, the salesman takes Mr. iPad around the counter and down an aisle, out of both earshot and my line of sight. I don't know what the ultimate resolution of the situation was, but I sincerely hope that it involved the salesman informing Mr. iPad that he's both ignorant and incomptent and should've called a plumber instead of inflicting himself on the general public. Whatever the ultimate result was, though, the salesman never came back. Ohh, I hunted for him. I hunted another Lowe's associate down, seeking help. I was informed that he didn't work in plumbing and would I please go wait by the sales desk while he paged his co-worker? I went back to the sales desk, where I proceeded to stand around becoming increasingly agitated by the fact that I had two simple questions and, at this point, I had been waiting to have them answered for almost forty minutes.
My anger must have been visible on my face, because as a stock boy who must've been working his first after-school job walked by, took one look at me, and stopped dead. I immediately felt somewhat guilty despite being entirely justified in my anger because it wasn't his fault that I'd been waiting for so long and because, well, my facial expression was apparently the sort that inflicts the same sort of sudden shock and fear as, say, walking into your back yard to discover a bear mauling your childhood dog, Mr. Wiggles. He tentatively asked me if I was alright, to which my response was a very blunt no, and then offered to help me with my two, eventually three, ridiculously simple questions. Can I get this vanity without the sink that's being offered in a package deal? No. Not even as a special order item? No, sorry. Where are the plungers? Three rows down, in Aisle 20. There. That wasn't so hard! I thanked him and was on my way.
Admittedly, I probably could've found the plungers on my own, eventually. But then I still wouldn't have an answer about the vanity.
Over in Aisle 20 was a selection of plungers, including one that comes with a white caddy so you don't have an ugly plunger laying around plainly visible in your bathroom. Win! I decided to get that one. Except on my way to cash register, walking through the plumbing fixtures aisle, the handle popped off, right there in my hand. At this point, my patience was thin. Despite reading a lot of Raymond Chandler lately and wanting to be more ladylike and stop my born-in-New-Jersey-where-fuck-is-a-comma swearing, I let a few words out. And who else should be standing there to see my sudden rush of irritation? Mr. iPad, looking as snarky and condescending as ever. I really need to work on my psychic powers because not only did my laser-beam-death-glare fail to melt his face off, he didn't even look vaguely uncomfortable. So much for consolation prizes.
Sigh.
So, back to Aisle 20 I went to trade my plunger for a different one. That one made it all the way to cash register, where a bright eyed young man asked me how I was doing that evening. In an attempt to avoid a repeat of terrifying the stock boy into paralysis, I gave him a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed smile and, as I was halfway through a Venti Chai from Starbucks, answered in a chipper voice, "Frankly, I am pissed off." This must not have been the answer he was expecting, as I once again paralyzed a Lowe's employee - this time with laughter. He blinked twice, cracked up to the point that he had to catch his breath and wiped tears from his eyes, and then thanked me for making his night. Well, at least that's one of us in a good mood, I told him!
I eventually made it home across the Delaware/Pennsylvania state line with my tile samples, my design books, and my toilet plunger. Of course, at this point I had made it the rest of the way through my enormous chai and was on the verge of doing the kindergartner potty dance. But my toilet still wasn't flushing, so to work I had to go with the plunger.
I spent about twenty minutes in the bathroom, working the plunger while muttering to myself about how, as a renter, this is one of the things I shouldn't have to be doing until I move into my new house. No, that's what maintenance is for, except calling maintenance in my building might result in my landlord calling me back on Wednesday and sending a plumber next week. And in the meantime, would I mind using the bathroom in the empty apartment down the hall? (Yes, that was seriously their solution the last time my plumbing broke, which was the time I couldn't wash dishes in my sink without water flooding the kitchen cabinet and leaking into the apartment below.)
Now, having to spend that much time staring into the depths of my toilet while pumping away at the plunger would've been bad enough - ohh, hey, I never noticed that slight stain near the rim! - except that I forgot to close the door. And my boyfriend and I have three very curious, very friendly, very affectionate, very clingy cats. Clingy to the point that two out of the three of them will follow me into the bathroom every single time, like a pair of miniature perverts in fur coats. One of them has even been known to stare curiously then decide to use his own litterbox while you're in there, regardless of what you're doing. Showering. Blow-drying your hair. Performing the second half of Mozart's "Don Giovanni". It doesn't matter what you're doing - to him, it's like it's some sort of communal bathroom activity. I don't know what's wrong with him. We suspect he's seriously brain damaged. And he was once spayed. Yes, spayed - but that's a story for another day.
So, I'm standing there plunging away at the toilet when the smallest and clingiest of the three decides he wants my attention. This is relatively normal. He likes to interrupt a lot of daily activities by literally launching himself at my boyfriend or me and then digging his claws in, waiting for us to catch him and cuddle him like a baby. Except I was bent over, so he landed on my back. To give you a mental picture of what this looked like, imagine this 5'3" girl with a bright red pixie cut in a black sweater and jeans flailing around her bathroom and shrieking yet more New Jersey swear words, swinging one arm violently behind her in a futile attempt to get the cat off, and trying to keep the plunger steady in the other hand so it doesn't drip clogged-toilet-water on her bare foot. All the while the other cat - the one that thinks bathroom time is communal - was staring up at me in confusion, trying to determine what the appropriate response to this shrieking and flailing should be. Ultimately, he made a decision. Which was, naturally, climbing into his litterbox and proving to me how much less complicated his toilet is than mine.
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